Our favorite way to celebrate New Year’s Day is by getting outside for a nature walk. On New Year’s Day in 2020, we had just arrived in Guam. Still wildly jet-lagged and muddled, we decided to head down to Umatac Bay for a walk along the beach. Everything felt foreign, exciting, and breathtakingly beautiful. It felt like a sneak-peak into the mysterious new life we’d leapt into.

As the devastating 2020 turned to the inexorable 2021, by New Years Day we were still in Denver for an extended visit with my parents. We drove to the foothills of the Rockies for a snowy and cold New Year’s Day hike in a park charmingly named the Lair of the Bear (thankfully we encountered no bears). But this year, we’re back on Guam and decided to return to Umatac Bay. Although the island is littered with beautiful hikes, this remains one of my favorites. It’s generally flat, which encourages a meandering exploration of the bounties of the shoreline here: crabs and coconuts, bleached driftwood and shells, mudskippers and butterflies.

According to legend, Magellan made landfall here 500 years ago. (Although it turns out that may not be quite true – some historians believe he actually made landfall further north in Tumon). Ever since that moment 500 years ago, Guam’s role as a strategic refueling stop between the Americas and Asia has been locked in – for better and for worse. At the top of the bluff over the bay, the ruins of an old Spanish fort protecting the bay are one example of the indelible imprints on the island left by generations of military forces from all over the world. It’s hard not to think about what those early Spanish sailors were thinking about as they kept watch. Was the shape of the shoreline the same? Was the vegetation the same lush green? Were there more dolphins? Fewer people? In my imagination, our view today is largely unchanged from what they saw all those many years ago.

I also love Umatac Bay because the walk along its shore changes so dramatically depending on the tide and the currents. At low tide, a coastal shelf extends the shoreline hundreds of feet into what is otherwise ocean waves. The tide pools teem with alien-looking animals – feathered starfish and blue starfish. Spiky black sea urchins tucked into crevices. Cucumbers and mudskippers. At high tide, you have to scramble over corral and under tree limbs (and hopefully not through spider webs) to keep your feet almost dry. Some days the beach is littered with stacks and stacks of bleached bamboo left behind by the whims of the current.

We’ve probably walked Umatac four or five times since that first hike at the beginning of 2020. But on this New Year hike, I kept mentally returning back to the last New Year hike here two years ago. I kept toggling back to the unbridled optimism of January 1, 2020 and comparing it against the cautious optimism of January 1, 2022. I struggled to make sense of my expectations versus the lived reality of the last two years. My optimism seems naive in hindsight. But even so, I feel optimistic all over again this year. It’s certainly a more tempered optimism, but it’s optimism nonetheless.

We have weathered so much. So much that we just weren’t prepared for. I kept searching for a metaphor that would make sense of the pandemic. I tested and discarded idea after idea. None of them captured the turmoil or confusion or unexpected joy. I decided that I’m tired of spending my energy trying to make sense of it all. I can’t risk missing what’s here in front of me. Right now.

Because here I am. On a tiny speck of an island. In the middle of the vastness of the Pacific. I’m surrounded by the people I love most and unending, unfathomable beauty. Every direction I turn yields a new line of curiosity and wonder. My optimism may be more tempered this year, but it still runs deep. I want to live today, in this moment.